Max’s new series The Pitt will be Noah Wyle‘s return to medical drama after his twelve-season run on ER. However, a new lawsuit alleges that The Pitt was meant to be an ER sequel all along. Deadline reports that the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton is suing the producers of The Pitt, including Wyle, for breach of contract.
The new lawsuit alleges that Crichton’s estate had been in a year-long negotiation to make a reboot of ER with Warner Bros. Television and producers Wyle, John Wells, and R. Scott Gemmill; Wyle would reprise his ER role of Dr. John Carter, the character who was said to have been Crichton’s avatar. The network then walked away from those negotiations, the suit alleges, and repackaged the proposed reboot as The Pitt, a series set in the hectic emergency room of a Pittsburgh hospital. The lawsuit claims that The Pitt is little more than a cosmetic reskinning of ER:
The Pitt is ER. It’s not like ER, it’s not kind of ER, it’s not sort of ER. It is ER complete with the same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot.
The lawsuit, which was filed this morning by Crichton’s widow Sherri Crichton on behalf of his estate, charges the defendants with breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and intentional interference with contractual relations. Crichton’s lawyers are seeking a jury trial.
Who Is Michael Crichton?
Medical doctor Michael Crichton became disinterested in the world of medicine, and pursued a career in literature; after publishing several pulp novels under a variety of pen names, he established a name for himself as a writer of cool, competent techno-thrillers. Prior to the 1990s, a number of Crichton books were adapted for the screen, including The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and The Great Train Robbery. He directed the latter himself, and also directed the theme-park-gone-amok classic Westworld, the Michael Douglas medical thriller Coma, and Runaway, which pitted Tom Selleck against Gene Simmons‘ killer robots. After the Tyrannosaurus-sized success of Steven Spielberg‘s Jurassic Park, however, Crichton’s books were snapped up for big-screen versions like lawyers off an Isla Nublar toilet. The next decade saw adaptations of Rising Sun, Congo, Disclosure, Sphere, The Lost World, and Eaters of the Dead (as The 13th Warrior). He also created ER, based on his own experiences as an emergency-room doctor, and wrote the script for 1996’s disaster movie Twister. However, the box office failure of 2003’s Timeline, Crichton’s increasingly reactionary political views, and his death in 2008 put a halt to cinema’s great Crichton gold rush.
The Pitt will star Wyle as an experienced ER doctor at an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital. It is also set to star Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Supriya Ganesh, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, Shabana Azeez, and Katherine LaNasa.
The Pitt has been given a fifteen-episode order; no release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
